Toon legend: I had to save goalie from drug lord’s hitman

Escobar targeted Asprilla row rival

FORMER Premier League star Faustino Asprilla has told how he stopped a rival player being killed by a Pablo Escobar hitman.

The Newcastle Utd legend claimed the drug baron’s feared gang had offered to murder Paraguay goalkeeper Jose Luis Chilavert. It came after Colombian Asprilla had a fight with the goalie during a 1997 World Cup qualifier in Paraguayan capital Asuncion. The 50-year-old said he got a call from assassin Julio Cesar Correa Valdes, dubbed Fierro, asking him to go to his hotel. He added: “When I arrived he was with about 10 other people, all drunk and partying with Paraguayan women.

“He said to me: ‘We need you to give us authorisation so two men here stay in as they want to go and kill Chilavert.

“I said: ‘What? Are you mad? You’re going to finish off Colombian football, that can’t happen. What happens on the pitch stays on the pitch’.”

Asprilla, who was a Toon striker from 1996 to 1998, made the shock confession in a mini-series about his life on Colombian TV. Fierro was later killed by paramilitaries in the country.